The Call
by Tali Rancourt
Summary: A dying man calls to a long-dead goddess for help... and gets an answer he never would have imagined. [Complete! Not the end of the story, just the end of this arc...]
1. Answering the Call

The colorful glimmer of faerie fire lit up the spires of Menzoberranzan as Tali sat silently on the upper terrace of her home and stared out over the city far below. In one hand she held a crystal glass of the heavily spiced green wine she favored, and with the other, she toyed with the ends of the cord that formed a belt for her dress. Her children were asleep, her husband away on surface business, she had dismissed the servants for the evening, and she found her thoughts returning to the questions that often plagued her.  
  
She had just started to reflect upon her fears, and her doubts that she could do a good job of this 'goddess' thing, when a voice interrupted her worries. Disoriented, she glanced up, then around, and then realized that she was alone, and the voice was coming from far away, loud enough to echo over even her own thoughts. She shook her head to clear it, and was just about to dismiss it as a trick of the wind carrying noise from the city, when the voice came again. This time, she fell still and silent, and listened.  
  
The voice, a man's voice, was strong, but tired and despairing, choked with injury, effort, and tears. "I am dying. There is no one near to help me. Lady, if there's any justice left in this world, please grant me the strength to show them one last fight and take some of them with me."   
  
It was a prayer, she realized, from someplace far distant on the surface. It was still a very new thing to her; she hadn't yet found many true followers, and the whispers in her mind came few and far between. Still, it aroused her curiosity, so she set the wineglass aside on a low table and rose to her feet. She took only a moment to focus and determine the location of the voice, then simply vanished in a whisper of silk.  
  
The dwindling daylight of the surface stung her eyes for a few seconds. She blinked away the pain and glanced around, amid a chorus of angry snarls. As her vision cleared, she found herself on a forested mountainside, facing five huge, feral, wolf-like beasts and their captive, who was held up by chains wound around a dead tree. Three of the gnolls advanced on her, lifting brutal weapons and grinning confidently and bestially, while the other two blocked her path to their prey.  
  
Tali sighed and rolled her eyes. "Gnolls. It would have to be gnolls, wouldn't it?" she muttered, and advanced calmly toward them. As the three got close enough to strike, she raised one hand to them, palm facing them, and simply whispered, "Pain…" They paused, looking confused. She clenched her hand into a fist, and there was a violet flash that left all five of the creatures howling on the ground, clutching their skulls, weapons dropped and forgotten.  
  
She stepped over the howling gnolls to inspect their mostly-unconscious hostage. Her brow furrowed as she found a Drow man, battered and bleeding from countless tooth and claw scrapes, chains wound around his wrists and body to hold him to the decaying tree. His long, pale hair was streaked with sweat, dirt, and blood, and one eye was swollen shut. His breathing was labored, and even to untrained eyes he was on the verge of death, but he still managed to raise his head and look at her.  
  
With a single azure eye, clear and bright with pain, the Drow regarded Tali. He closed the eye and squeezed it shut for a moment, then opened it and looked at her again. In a labored whisper, he breathed, "Lyssariel…? Surely… I'm dead… then…"  
  
Tali shook her head, as she slowly and carefully unwound the chains, and slipped an arm around the elf's waist to support him. "An old elven goddess of justice…" she mused aloud. "No one answers to that name anymore, I'm afraid," she murmured thoughtfully. "I guess that makes it my province now. My name is Talisantia. I've come to help you." As the chains fell away, she slid both arms around him and smiled faintly. "And you're not dead. Not yet. Nor will you be anytime soon, if I have anything to say about it."  
  
The man's uninjured eye widened, and he stared up at her, awestruck. "Talisantia… you're… the spider-slayer… it's really true?" He slumped in her arms, then tried to hold himself up again. "You're one of us…" he breathed in wonder. "…you wear Drow skin…" He tried to laugh, bitterly, but a deep, wracking cough overtook him and left him wheezing as she held him. "I am shebali… I am nothing… an outcast… I have no family left, anywhere…"  
  
Tali touched a finger to the Drow's lips to quiet him, and glanced around again to get her bearings. She had to get him away before the gnolls recovered, and she couldn't concentrate well enough to teleport safely back to the city with all that howling going on. Instead, she clutched him close, closed her eyes, and touched a fingertip to the recall stone that hung around her neck. The mountainside disappeared, replaced by the darkness of a small cavern.  
  
As she let her vision adjust again, Tali laid the elf down gently on the stone floor and knelt beside him. She spoke quietly as a dim violet glow surrounded her hands, lighting up the tiny cave, and laid her hands on his chest. "I guess that's what they call me…" she said softly, and her eyes drifted closed as the light spread out to encompass the man's entire body. The wounds began to knit together, the swelling subsided from his eye, and his breathing eased. "Yes. It's true. I destroyed the Spider." She opened her eyes and smiled fondly down at him. "And you, my friend… you are not 'nothing'. Your call was strong. Your mind is strong. 'Nothing' wouldn't have been able to drown out even my own thoughts."  
  
Finally, she sighed and drew her hands away, and the violet light faded away. The man struggled up to one elbow to look at her, blinking both eyes open. "You… you heard me?" he stammered disbelievingly. "You really heard me?" He blinked a few times more, then gingerly rubbed his eyes. "…but I've never… you're… you're beautiful…" His ears pinkened, and he tucked a few strands of hair behind one ear. "I… guess you hear that a lot… um…"  
  
Tali laughed and tossed her hair back over her shoulder with a flip of her head, then sat down beside him, eased one bare knee under him, and rested his head on it. "Of course I heard you. You called for help. Mine may not have been the name you were calling, but I heard your call, and I answered." She tilted her head to one side and regarded him for a moment, her cheeks flushing warm. "I… well… thank you. I hear it, I suppose, but so rarely from anyone who truly means it. You're…" She grinned and looked away, then looked at him again. "You're really quite beautiful yourself. Tell me your name?" She shrugged, and reached down to stroke the fingertips of one hand through his hair, carefully working free the knots and brushing away the dirt and blood. "I could take it from you, but it's so much less invasive to just ask."  
  
He grinned the brilliant, carefree grin of a man who assumed that he was dying and had nothing to worry about anymore, and laid his head comfortably on her knee. "If this is death…" he whispered,"…then it's no wonder that my brothers and sisters praised it so." He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then let it go and relaxed, but couldn't resist opening his eyes to look up at her again. "Tarlyn. Just Tarlyn."  
  
"Well, Tarlyn," Tali murmured, "you're not dying." She smoothed his hair back from his forehead with one hand, and smiled fondly. "You're too strong to let go that easily." She raised her head and glanced around in the darkness, then raised a hand and whispered, "Light…" A dim white glow faded into being near the cavern's ceiling, casting a faint light over them both as she shook her hair down and smiled down at him again.  
  
"Death is overrated, an old friend of mine used to say…" she said half to herself, then laughed bitterly. "I used to be nothing myself, you know. A long, long time ago. Shebali. Outcast. Rogue. Hunted. It's not an easy way to live." Her gaze became misty and faraway as she reflected for a moment before she continued. "But sometimes… sometimes, I think it was better that way. It was the only way one of us could learn to think for ourselves, instead of blindly swallowing what the matron mothers and the priestesses told us."  
  
With a hiss of breath, Tarlyn stared up at her, blue eyes suddenly wide. "So it really was all lies?" he asked, the life abruptly returning to his voice. His brow furrowed, and he caught her eyes with his. "The whole thing… who was really running the show, in the end? Who did it serve?" He caught himself and bit his lip, not quite believing that he'd had the audacity to ask such a question of a goddess, but waited, holding his breath, for her answer.  
  
Sadness darkened Tali's eyes for a moment, but an approving smile crossed her face, too. She'd finally found one of her own kind who was willing to question even her. "In the end…" She sighed and shook her head, sadly. "In the end… you want the truth, Tarlyn? In the end, the priestesses ran things for their own ends. In the end, Lolth had gone insane. In the end, she cared about nothing but pain and chaos. In the end, it was one big, stupid, never-ending power struggle." She laughed a sharp, bitter little laugh. "In the end, it was everyone for themselves."  
  
Sitting up slowly, Tarlyn winced at the lingering soreness, but his eyes never left Tali's. He let his breath go in a rush, and simply nodded. "Thank you," he said softly and earnestly. "I couldn't imagine what kind of mind could have created a world such as that." He smiled crookedly. "I guess I was right after all."  
He slid the straps of his ruined and gnoll-chewed pack off his shoulders, then began to paw through its remaining contents. "Tell me how it happened?" he asked hopefully as he searched. "If you have the time… I'll never know, and stories get twisted even by the best of intentions… I ask you, Lady… please… let me write it down." Finally, he fished out half of a travel journal. "Let the truth be kept, if only here in what's left of my journal…"  
  
Tali raised an eyebrow, settled back against the stones, and tilted her head to one side, curiously. "How it happened?" she asked. "How what happened, exactly? The end of it all? How I got where I am?" She shrugged, grinned crookedly, and laughed. "Sure, if you're really all that interested. Sure, why not? This is a safe place, and I have all the time in the world…"  
  
Tarlyn fished out his pen box, then settled himself with his back against the stone wall. "Everything," he said, blinking sadly at the tattered remains of his journal. "Tell me everything. I have nowhere to be."  
  
Tali smiled, softly and fondly, and nodded. "Everything it is, then." She laughed softly, and settled on the floor, her own back against the wall, beside him. "Everything. Well, begin at the beginning, I suppose… It all started in Menzoberranzan – gods, I forget how many years ago anymore. It was seven hundred fifty years ago? Eight hundred? Something like that…"  
  
[To Be Continued…] 


	2. Origins of the Goddess

Tarlyn began to write in tiny, precise letters that flowed across the page quickly as Tali spoke. "Either way," she said softly and a little sadly, "…it was a long, long time ago. My mother Nal'Chea T'Sarran, a young priestess, was chosen to lead the graduation ceremony for her class at the academy."  
  
Tarlyn's pen paused, and he looked up and stared at her. "But… I knew Nal'Chea! You must… but…" He stopped himself, shaking his head, and muttered under his breath, "Oh, shut up, Tarlyn, and write." As the rows of tiny letters flowed from his pen, he marveled. This goddess was younger than his father, it seemed, and he wasn't sure how that could be possible. It piqued his curiosity. His writing wound effortlessly around the stains and tears in the pages, and he remarked offhandedly, "I've heard rumors about what happens in those."  
  
A wry little smirk curled Tali's lips as she glanced over at him, and she laughed. "Yes. I'm that young. Younger than a good many of those I'm trying to take care of, now that I find myself here." She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall, then nodded a little. "Yeah." She was silent for a few minutes, and when she finally did speak again, it was with some difficulty.   
  
Her voice was heavy with disgust and emotion as she said haltingly, "Most of what you've heard… was probably quite true." She shuddered deeply, eyes still closed, and continued, "You see, at the climax of the ceremony… the one chosen to lead it was called upon to summon a thing… a demon, a horrible monster, from the Abyss, and…" She bit her lip and swallowed. "…and give herself to it. That… is what my mother did."  
  
He looked up at her, aghast, but never stopped writing. He was simultaneously fascinated and horrified as he realized that his was the hand finally documenting Lolth's insanity. "She was insane," he stated in quiet horror as he wrote. "Insane. Why would a daughter of the priesthood be ordered to surrender herself to a monster? A male monster, no less?"  
  
Eyes still closed, Tali nodded and murmured. "Yes, she was insane. There was never any logic to it. For someone who was supposed to spend life ruling over males, being raped by a monster was a badge of honor. Why? Because she said so. Conceiving from it was an even greater mark of favor. Why? Because she said so."  
  
The anger rose in her voice, breaking past the careful restraint, and she picked up a rock and threw it at the opposite wall of the cave, where it shattered. "That… is what I was supposed to be. A perfect abomination. But there was something else waiting, and scheming, and biding his time until the call came… something much more cunning and powerful and evil than the stupid, snarling monstrosities the summoning was supposed to call up. Something that thought having a child in the mortal world would be the perfect way to gain a foothold for his own plans."  
  
Tarlyn did not interrupt, he simply took down every word, flinching only a little as stone struck stone. Occasionally, he flicked his eyes over to look at the goddess out of the corner of his eyes, scribbling notes about her voice and her expression as she spoke.  
  
Tali shuddered, squeezing her eyes shut, and slammed a fist against her knee. "And that's why I was born," she spat. "A daughter, so I could take my proper place in the so-called ruling class of our society… Drow, to all outward appearance…" She shrugged a little and sighed softly. "As far as my mother knew, she had failed, and I was just the child of one of her lovers. I was a girl, though, so I was kept, and raised to become a priestess myself when the time came."  
  
She opened her eyes, smirked, and bent a little without rising to her feet, sweeping one arm out to her side in a grandiose half-bow. She cleared her throat and spoke the old formal words of introduction, but with a bitter, mocking edge in her voice. "My name is Talisantia T'Sarran, noble daughter of House T'Sarran, of the great City of Spiders, Menzoberranzan." She shrugged and laughed. "Or I was, once."  
  
Tarlyn caught up, then stopped and stared up at her, blinking. "You mean you're… oh my." He blinked again, and shifted the book on his lap. "Well. I'm supposed to kill you on sight. But that's all right, really. You're supposed to kill me, too." He chuckled dryly and eyed the implement in his hand, then grinned and added, "Besides which, I don't think this pen can do much damage." He cleared his throat and turned his attention back to his writing. "So. So no one knew, then. Since you know it now, I assume you found out later?"  
  
Tali laughed merrily as she reached over and brushed a lock of hair back from Tarlyn's eyes. "Oh, you have nothing to fear from me. I prefer to get to know someone before I decide whether to kill them. Besides, I like you, so far, and I don't think you want to kill me quite yet." She winked and nudged his shoulder, then cleared her throat and settled back again, nodding. "I learned it all, over time, and a lot of it only recently."   
  
She shrugged quietly. "So, since you know my name, and you know you're supposed to kill me, I assume you know about the fall of my family, my escape from the city, and the murder of my mother and my brother at the hands of the priestesses." She toyed with one end of her cord belt, smiling crookedly. "I gather I was blamed for the whole thing, and I know I was marked for death in every Drow civilization from here to Krynn to Oerth and back again…"  
  
Tarlyn grinned brightly as he slipped into the easy camaraderie of a fellow outcast, and nodded emphatically. "Yes. When, of course, they were all killed by the priestesses to atone for your so-called crimes. He nodded, and laughed a small, bitter laugh. "Amazing. She couldn't even keep one city sane, but she sure could manage to warn even the…" He stopped, looked up, and stared with wide azure eyes at Tali. "Wait a minute. Krynn… you mean you've been there? Slax, they always told me it was a children's story!"  
  
Tali sat up straighter, her eyes lighting up with enthusiasm. "It's real. I've been there. There are huge sailing ships that travel between worlds, between the stars… they're called spelljammers. I sailed on them for a hundred years." She raised one hand and gestured up toward the sky. "I've been to Krynn… to a place called Greyhawk, once… and the Rock, oh the things I saw! There are so many worlds out there… so many stories… I even found a world I loved, and settled down to live there, for a time…"  
  
She sighed wistfully and smiled at Tarlyn. "There are things out there that you would never believe until you saw them. Things that Drow have never laid eyes on because they're too afraid to leave their own cities and face the light of day." She laughed softly as she reminisced, then sighed. "So, yes. That's what I did with myself, once I got used to life on the surface world, and mastered the one useful talent my father's blood gave me."  
  
Tarlyn's eyes shimmered with moisture, then he blinked it away and said slowly and hopefully, "You're telling me it's all real? It's not just a story for children, there really is a Skysea, and there really are worlds hidden up among the stars?" He marveled, and as a single tear streaked down his cheek, he chuckled softly. "Next I know, you'll be telling me you've seen Blackmoor…"  
  
Tali smiled and reached over to brush the tear away, then murmured, "It's real, Tarlyn. It's all real. So much of what we dismissed as children's stories is completely true…" She smiled wryly and added, "And so much of what we accepted to be gospel truth was completely wrong. I imagine you've learned a lot of that already, haven't you?" She lit up again, and sighed wistfully. "Blackmoor… It must have been incredible once. It's a ruin now, if a beautiful one. I didn't get to stay there very long. The place is so heavy with archmages, I was terrified of being discovered."  
  
He nodded and turned the page silently. Eventually, he said softly, "The world is full of answers, if you look for them. They told me that the sunlight would burn through my skin, too, and all it did was make me more curious. They told me there was no such thing as a glacier…" He glanced down at the page, and allowed himself a small, proud smile. "Hell, they told me bread was poisonous to men…" He shook his head and blinked back more tears. "It must have been beautiful…"  
  
Tali nodded softly, reached out, and brushed away his tears with a single fingertip. "The whole world can be beautiful, if you only look at it in wonder and curiosity, instead of fear and loathing." She chuckled and whispered, "You're only the second of our kind that I've ever known who learned that."  
  
Tarlyn's ears flushed pink again, and he tried to shrug it off. "That's why I travel," he said quietly. "I want to see it all. All of it. I've stood on the slopes of the Dragonspires and watched the cranes load cargo in the ports of Cormyr…" He grinned proudly. "I've even…" He fell silent for a moment and looked into her eyes, then realized that she was probably the only person he could tell. "…I've been to Evermeet."  
  
Her eyes widened, and she stared, letting out a slow, quiet breath. "You… oh. Oh! Oh, it must have been so beautiful…" She shrugged and sighed wistfully. "They don't really welcome me there, though some of their people have called to me by other names, the way you did." She laughed and murmured, "I am… both healing and retribution. There were those who called me an avenging angel, even when I was…" She paused, and shrugged again. "…alive, I guess, is the best word for it."  
  
Tarlyn blinked, and lowered his eyes. "Things are changing there." he said quietly. "You'd be surprised. I bet they know about you already." He looked down, then reached into the neck of his tunic, and withdrew something on a simple thin chain, though the chain was clearly something above and beyond the craftsmanship of this world. "Here. I don't know if it'll be helpful to you, but I wasn't planning on going anyway, and..." He placed it on the ground, in front of her. It was a tiny mithril unicorn, its horn carved from a shell of particularly exquisite abalone. "...you should go there and speak to them. That'll...get you there." He looked up at her. "Go talk to them, Lady. See how they receive you."  
  
Tali gasped softly, "You would… I could… oh, Tarlyn, how beautiful…" She reached out to touch it with a fingertip carefully, as if the carved image might bite her, and her voice wavered, becoming soft and mournful as her eyes shimmered as she bit back her own tears. "Drizzt wore one just like it. He never took it off…"  
  
Tarlyn stared up at her, his pen pausing again. "You knew Drizzt?" he asked, incredulously. This lady was full of surprises, it seemed. He chuckled and remarked, "I guess you really got around." He blinked, then, and shrugged. "I… well, it's the least I could do. You saved my life." He smiled a strange, quiet, thoughtful little smile and murmured, "It's not every day you get to meet a goddess."  
  
Tali smiled fondly and warmly in spite of the tears that trickled down her cheeks. "My starlight…" she whispered faintly and gazed silently into the distance. When she was finally certain that her voice wouldn't break, she continued, "He's on the other side now. He died the way he wanted to… a hero. But that was a long, long time ago." She picked up the chain and wound it around her fingers, letting the unicorn lay in the palm of her hand. As she admired it, she said proudly, "If you'll come back to the city with me – and I sincerely hope you will – I'll introduce you to our daughter."  
  
She paused and regarded him with a raised eyebrow and a crooked little smile. At last, she laughed quietly. "No? No. I guess you don't, do you? But I still haven't gotten used to thinking of myself that way. I'm… just Tali."  
  
He gasped, and this time, actually dropped his pen. As he fumbled on the ground beside him for it, he asked in a shaky voice, "You… want me to come back to Menzoberranzan?" He laughed and shook his head as he stammered in disbelief. "Oh, but they'd kill me… and… I mean… I… Well, I guess…" He raised his eyes to hers, bit his lip, and asked with a hopeful smile, "For a while?"  
  
Tali nodded eagerly and reassured him, "Yes. Yes, I want you to. Please come back with me." She laughed, and murmured, "No one will harm you, I promise." Grinning brightly, she reached out and brushed the back of one hand softly along his cheek. "Who would dare, when I'm the one bringing you back? Come with me… stay with me… stay for a while, for as long as you like." Her own smile grew hopeful, and her voice dropped to a shy little whisper. "I'd love to have the company of one of my own… especially one like you…"  
  
For several long, silent minutes, the two stared into each other's eyes. At last, Tarlyn broke the silence by whispering, "Lady… I'd follow you into the dungeons of Thay if you asked me."  
  
[Still to be continued…] 


	3. Return to the City

With a groan and a stretch, Tali eased to her feet and chuckled, "Hopefully, that will never be necessary. Dungeons are always so damp and unpleasant." Carefully, she slid the chain and the unicorn into an inside fold of her dress, then dusted herself off and remarked, "Well, one thing's for sure. The rocks haven't gotten any warmer, these last few centuries." Grinning, crookedly, she half-knelt and reached a hand out to Tarlyn as he put away his pen and stuffed the pen box and the tattered journal back into his pack.  
  
Tarlyn planted a hand on the stone beneath him to steady himself, then sighed as he rose to his feet as well. He shouldered the pack, looping one torn strap over his shoulder, and shrugged. "I can walk, I think…" He tilted his head to one side and listened for a few seconds before he said, "I'm surprised we can't hear the brood-mothers from here…" He blinked, and laughed. "Oh, that's right."  
  
Tali chuckled herself, nodding quietly, and smiled proudly. "There aren't any anymore, nor any of the other transformed monstrosities." She brushed her hair back behind her ears as she continued. "We saved those who were still sane enough to be saved. We made them Drow again and let them start their lives over. The ones who had descended too far into madness to be healed… well, at least we gave them mercy. It's more than she would ever have done."  
  
She stepped closer, standing straight once more, and reached her hand out to Tarlyn again. "Here. You're still tired and sore. I'll take us home the easy way. It means you'll need to touch me, though." She giggled softly and regarded him with a curious, playful little grin as she teased, "I hope that's not too severe a hardship." She waited, one eyebrow raised, as she watched his reaction.  
  
He grinned a nervous, lopsided grin and gathered his courage as he reached for her hand. As he reached, he wondered first if she knew what she – and the way she was dressed, in that flimsy scrap of silk – was doing to him, then concluded that she probably did, and that was why she was laughing. Finally, his hand touched hers, and he curled his fingers around hers and held them tightly.  
  
Biting the inside of her lip, Tali stifled another chuckle as she caught his thoughts, and said in a voice full of feigned innocence, "That's better. See? I'm not so bad. I don't bite." Pausing to reconsider, she added, "Well, not unless you ask me to." She squeezed his hand, and there was a moment of disorientation, then the darkness of the cavern was replaced with the multicolored faerie fire glow of Menzoberranzan. The city lay spread out far below them, and the two stood on a terrace hung between two stalactites, high above the streets.  
  
"It's beautiful…" Tarlyn breathed as he gazed out over the city he hadn't seen in centuries. Suddenly, it dawned on him that there was only one place in the city that could have commanded such a view: Tier Breche, the ledge above the city where the academies stood. He turned, and his gaze swept over the pyramid that housed the warriors' academy, and the tower of Sorcere, the wizards' academy. He realized that where he stood was above and behind them, and realized a moment later that this was the ground on which Lolth's academy had once stood.  
  
He stared around, then down, wide-eyed. Instead of the sprawling shape of a giant stone spider, he saw more terraces, buildings, and towers, forming a palatial version of a normal Drow family complex. "It's gone?" he asked, quietly and incredulously, then threw back his head and let out a long, high whoop of exultation. "Merciful spires, it's gone!" he exclaimed, and grinned hugely as he turned back to the panorama of the city.  
  
As he stared, a soft hiss, as of a desert wind, came from behind Tali. "Well. You're back early." She just smirked and remained still, and Tarlyn whipped around to find the source of the voice. He almost immediately regretted it – behind Tali stood a vision from his nightmares. A tall, lanky man with jet-black fur and the head of a jackal returned Tarlyn's gaze with luminous, golden, slitted, snakelike eyes. "I hope you haven't been telling your friend here about the gardens, little elf," he hissed, "…because they're not done yet."  
  
Tarlyn leapt backwards and drew his sword, stumbling and staring in horror. He fell back against the terrace's railing, and almost tumbled over it when his sword abruptly became a spray of colorful flowers in his hand. Swallowing hard, he grasped the railing and stared at the flowers helplessly.  
  
"For me?" hissed the jackal-man. "How thoughtful of you, boy." He grinned a snake-fanged grin and flicked a forked tongue out in a taunting little wave.  
  
Tali covered her face with one hand, shaking her head, for a second, and then stepped between them. She reached out and gingerly pulled Tarlyn back from the edge with one hand, then turned to cast an aggravated but friendly gaze at the jackal and said with forced patience, "Now really, do you always have to be so dramatic? You're going to scare me half to death one of these days, never mind any of my visitors."   
  
Chuckling fondly, she turned to Tarlyn. "This is Set," she said by way of introduction. "He's harmless enough. I'll have to tell you about his part in all this, if you want to hear the whole sordid story sometime." Turning back to Set, she murmured, "Set, this is Tarlyn. He's… going to be here for a while, so be nice."  
  
"Charmed, I'm sssure," Set hissed, then turned and glided away in unearthly silence.  
  
Tarlyn let his breath go in a rush and stared after Set warily, his skin still crawling. He looked down at his hands, and shook his head when he saw that the bunch of flowers had become his sword again. He slid it back into its scabbard, struggling to regain his composure, then nodded and said softly, "Of course I do. I guess I'll need to buy some paper. Does anyone down here take surface money anymore?"  
  
Tali chuckled and nodded. "Most everyone, actually. We encourage trade with the surface world nowadays." She smiled thoughtfully. "I've actually got paper here, but we can still go to the market if you like. Maya, and what's left of the mortal half of my family, live down there, in the old family home near the marketplace." She, too, stared after Set as he departed, and murmured under her breath, "I wonder what Taksuret put in his coffee this morning…"  
  
Falling back into spirits and into the conversation, Tarlyn stuck his tongue out in the direction Set had gone, then shrugged and smiled. "Whatever's easiest. I guess this story is going to take a lot longer than either of us thought." He gazed at Tali now, surreptitiously, his ears and cheeks pink even through the dark skin as he admired her. It took him a moment to tear his eyes away, but at last he asked, "So how did it happen? How did House T'Sarran really fall?"  
  
Tali grinned and swept toward the nearest door leading inside. "It could take quite a while, yes. You did say everything, and that leaves an awful lot of ground to cover," she murmured, then raised a finger and chuckled softly. "Hold that question. I'll be right back," she said softly, and stepped through the door. Tarlyn watched her go, silently admiring her walk, then turned back and stared out over the city again in quiet disbelief.  
  
A few minutes later, Tali returned, with a book tucked under one arm and a full wineglass in each hand. She gestured to a pair of light but comfortable chairs a short distance away on the terrace and smiled charmingly. "Shall we?" she inquired. Once they were seated, she handed Tarlyn a glass of wine and the book. "That one's blank," she explained. "I hope it will do." She shrugged quietly, and murmured, "There's no reason why we shouldn't be comfortable and enjoy the view while we talk."  
  
Tarlyn barely stopped himself from remarking on the view he was enjoying as he slid his pack off and set it down beside him, then took a seat. He took the wineglass and settled the book in his lap, bowing his head in thanks. Clearing his throat a little self-consciously, he raised his glass and whispered, "To the Queen of the Underdark."  
  
It was Tali's turn to blush this time. "Indeed…" she responded with a smile, her ears flushing as pink as his had earlier. "And to good people, and long overdue change." She raised her glass and touched it to his with a soft clink of crystal, then lowered it and took a small sip. "I guess I am, aren't I? But please… just call me Tali. My friends always have."  
  
Tarlyn's pulse quickened as the implication set in. "Tali…" he whispered, tasting the word, then aloud, more confidently. "Tali. All right. If you're sure." Even as he said it, he admonished himself for the spark of attraction she felt. Whatever he thought he was feeling, he was sure it couldn't be real. Goddesses don't do that, he told himself, no matter how beautiful they are. Even if they did, they certainly wouldn't with a nobody like him. He was embarrassed to hear a squeak in his voice as he fished out his pen. "So. Um. House T'Sarran's fall. You were talking about how it happened?"  
  
Again, Tali caught his thoughts without strictly intending to, and she bowed her head, hoping that he wouldn't see her blush. She stared at her bare feet for a moment, then took a deep breath, looked up again, and sighed. "The house… right…" she said softly, then chuckled to herself. She berated herself for acting silly, then gathered her thoughts and picked up where she'd left off. "Well, I was raised to be a priestess. That was really pretty rare in my family. They were always sorcerers and mages-for-hire, but every family needs priestesses, so there I was. When it came time for me to attend the Academy, there were tests... and the test of loyalty exposed me for what I am." She shrugged, and smiled a little sadly. "I always had a pretty good idea I was different, just not how different..."  
  
Tarlyn began writing again, in the same tiny, orderly script. He tucked his hair behind the points of his ears, and then continued writing as he fell easily into the routine of interviewing. "What was life like in the Academy?" he asked. "Was it different for you than for your classmates?" He looked up and waited expectantly for her answer.  
  
Tali laughed and shook her head, then said quietly, "I never made it that far. You see…" She gestured to the two remaining academy buildings. "I don't know what it was like there, but when you were destined to be a priestess, Lolth herself touched you, to see what you were made of, if you were good enough and loyal enough…"   
  
A subconscious shudder passed through her as she remembered. "She touched me, and I felt something else inside me." She raised her wineglass and took another small sip, then swirled the glass and sighed. "She saw something that didn't belong to her, and it frightened her. My father's blood made itself known when she touched me, and I found out what I really was. And I… I changed."  
  
He nodded quietly, his pen making faint scratching sounds as he kept writing. Without looking up, he asked, "What happened to you, after that?"  
  
Tali was silent for several minutes, until Tarlyn caught up and looked up at her. When he finally did, she heaved a sigh, set the wineglass down beside her chair, and rose to her feet. "What you're about to see," she cautioned him, "…isn't a spell. It isn't an illusion. It's what I am. It's what I was born, and never learned to use until the first time I was threatened." Her voice was quiet and heavy with misery. So many times, she'd shown this to someone who asked her about her story, only to have them panic and leave when she showed them, and she quietly hoped that this wouldn't be another such case.  
  
As Tarlyn watched with wide, curious eyes, Tali closed her eyes, and her form changed. Suddenly, her black skin and snowy hair had a strange copper cast, a small pair of horns peeked out of the mane of her hair, and a pair of huge, wickedly clawed black wings spread out behind her. She looked every inch the demon she claimed to be. Then in a rapid-fire series of changes, she became a redheaded human girl, a pale-skinned and silver-haired surface elf, and a wolf-woman covered in plush white fur.   
  
A second later, she was herself again, and she collected her wineglass and settled back into her chair. "What happened…" she mused. "As I understand it, the priestesses were ordered to kill me. They were holding me prisoner, preparing for a proper sacrifice. My brother Mourn somehow managed to set me free." She sighed quietly, the regret and pain becoming more evident in her voice with every word. "He was so young, and I never paid him any mind… he was male, why would I have? That's what they taught us." She laughed a deep, bitter, aching laugh. "He was male, so he was less. Not worth my notice. But he risked his life to set me free, even knowing the monster I was."  
  
The tears welled up in her eyes and flowed freely down her cheeks as she spoke. "They caught us. I wanted to take him with me. I wanted us to get away together… but he insisted that I go on alone, and took them on by himself." She shook her head and said softly and vehemently, "I swore… I promised him… I'd never make the mistake of disregarding someone just because they were male again, as long as I lived. And I won't."  
  
It took Tarlyn several long minutes to catch up. He wrote down her words, exactly as she spoke them, then added notes each time she paused. He looked up briefly, then looked down at the page again. She was crying, tears of grief and pain… for a male? This woman really was something completely different… "I knew Mourn T'Sarran," he said softly. "Not for very long," he added sadly. "Why did he save you? Did he ever give you a reason?" He thought he knew the answer, but he wanted to record it in her words.  
  
"All he ever said," Tali said in a quiet voice choked with tears, "…was that it wasn't right. That I was his sister. It meant something to him, in a way it never did to anyone else. He was so different… he had a soul that few other Drow have ever had…" She leaned her head back against the back of the chair and stared up into the darkness of the cavern ceiling above as she struggled to compose herself. When she finally regained control of her voice, she blinked away the tears and continued. "They murdered him for it. He and my mother were both sacrificed. Him for letting me get away, and her for giving birth to me in the first place. The rest of the family, she allowed to survive, provided that they managed to destroy me."  
  
In shock, all Tarlyn could do for a moment was shake his head. He shook it off, and continued writing. "It's an honor and a mark of favor for a priestess to have a child with a demon, and they killed your mother for it. Absolute insanity." He looked up at her again for a moment, sadly wishing he could do something to ease her pain, then looked down and asked softly, "How did you escape?"  
  
As she brushed the last few tears from her cheeks with a fingertip, Tali shrugged and mused, "My father was the wrong demon, apparently. I guess I was some kind of threat." She threw her head back and laughed, simultaneously merry and a little bitter. "Well, in the end, I suppose I was, wasn't I? Then, though…" She shook her head. "Then, I ran." She took a deep gulp from her wineglass, then eyed it critically and shivered as she remembered. "Once, I got cornered. I changed again, gods only know how, and I slaughtered three priestesses. It was either blind luck or someone looking out for me, I guess."  
  
She heaved a sigh and gestured toward the main road out of the city and into the wilds of the Underdark. "I still don't know how I managed to get out of the city and into the caverns, but I did." She smiled fondly. "I hid, in the same cavern I took you to before we came here. That's been my safe spot for a great many years now." She shrugged and smiled faintly. "I stayed there and lived as best I could, until I was sure that they weren't searching that close to the city for me anymore. After that… I had nowhere else to go. I was a rogue… alone… so I made my way to the one place they feared. I went to the surface."  
  
[You guessed it. Still more to come…] 


	4. Sunrises and Spelljammers

A smile crossed Tarlyn's lips as he nodded, not looking up until he'd caught up with Tali's words. "You probably took the Merchant's Road up, like I did," he said as he flipped to the next page. "…through the Duergar caverns, up to the Shaft of Night." He smiled faintly, remembering his own journey, so long ago.  
  
"I think so," Tali said, furrowing her brow in thought, then shrugged. "It's been a long time. Fight after fight, hiding in the dark, desperate not to be seen for fear that everyone and everything in the world was going to want to kill me." Laughing, she shook her head and added, "It all looks so different when you haven't seen it in hundreds of years. All I really cared was that I'd found my way out."  
  
Grinning once more, eyes alight with the memory, she recounted the tale. "It was night when I reached the surface," she breathed. "…that much I do remember. I saw stars for the first time. Oh, the stars… they were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen." She curled her feet beneath her and relaxed.  
  
Nodding, Tarlyn closed his eyes and blinked back tears yet again. "There were so many of them…" he whispered, and smiled over at her as he shared the memory. "And the air felt different, and the ground… and there's grass up by the mouth of the cave…"  
  
Tali sighed, then nodded emphatically. "You understand! You really understand… almost no one here does… The air moved… the grass moved in the wind…" She laughed a little and shook her hair out over her shoulders. "I sat there, touching the grass and just looking at everything, the entire night. There was so much in that one small place that I'd never seen before…"  
  
Grinning understandingly, Tarlyn asked, "And did you panic when by morning it was all wet with dew?" He chuckled as he remembered his own confusion, and flicked his eyes up from the page in hopes of catching her smile.  
  
He wasn't disappointed, as Tali began to giggle quietly, then laugh aloud. "I didn't understand," she managed in breaths as she laughed. "Where was all this water coming from? It was wet… everything was all wet…" She grinned and caught her breath, then softly said, "And then the sky started to lighten…"  
  
"And your eyes burned with colors, the likes of which you'd never even seen before…" Tarlyn breathed as he gazed at her. He stared for a moment, watching the way she moved when she laughed, when she breathed, then forced himself to look back at his page and keep writing.  
  
Tali's eyes watered, then squeezed shut as she remembered the sting of her first sunrise. "Oh, how it burned, but it was a good burn…" she whispered, then opened her eyes. She spoke slowly as she stared into the distance, seeing not the city or even her companion's eyes on her, but that burning dawn as it replayed itself in her mind. "There was so much to see, so many colors, so many things! How could anyone call it horrible? How could our people call it cursed? I wanted to look, and look, and look, and see everything, even if it killed me."  
  
"And the sun felt so good… so warm, so welcoming." Tarlyn smiled brightly and warmly. He'd finally found someone who was like him, who understood both the horror he'd come from, and the beauty of the world above. He allowed himself a small smirk, and muttered, "And you wondered if maybe the stories about how terrible it was were just the selfish whimpers of a race of punished children who shouted back to their mothers, 'Fine, I hate dessert anyway!'…"  
  
The back-and-forth flow of the conversation became easier as the two shared memories, and Tali picked up without missing a beat. "And this tiny little selfish part of you thought that was perfectly okay, because they wouldn't understand anyway, and for that little while, it didn't really matter that you're all alone, because you have all of this to see and explore… Yes! You really do understand…"  
  
Tarlyn twirled the pen between his fingers and grinned, then kept writing as he asked, "Where did you go first?" He was intrigued now, wondering how her journey might have paralleled his own, and growing almost comfortable enough to forget what the woman sitting beside him really was.  
  
Tali raised her wineglass and gazed at it for a moment, then took a small sip. "I wandered in the forests for a long time," she said, "learning to control the changes as best I could." She shrugged. "I finally got at least a rudimentary handle on it. Then I found this small village and tried my luck…"  
  
She winced and rubbed the back of one shoulder. The sting of that first rejection and the gouge she'd taken as she ran away never quite faded. "That didn't go so well," she confessed. "'Kill it, it's Drow.' Well, that seemed to be the gist of it, anyway. I didn't speak the language yet." She shrugged and stretched, then smiled quietly. "So I kept wandering, and I stayed away from people, until I found a city big enough to lose myself in." She smiled proudly. "All the while, breaking my back to master this new ability, learning how to change, how to do it at will instead of when I was angry or threatened, how to hold myself in one form for longer and longer times…"  
  
Remembering his own first disastrous encounters and the times he'd narrowly escaped with his life, Tarlyn laughed and nodded his agreement. "I found my cloak and my gloves were my best friends almost right away."  
  
"Tell me about it," Tali sympathized. "In a way, though, that was good. It actually made me truly thankful for what I was. It took some time, but I found my way to Waterdeep. Gods, what a place that was. So many people… libraries… shops… I learned so much there." She swallowed the last of her wine, then set the empty glass down beside her chair. "And I could be myself there. No one questioned a Drow in the streets. I even heard there were others in the city, though I never saw them, or sought them out."  
  
Tarlyn grinned, watching her out of the corner of his eye as he wrote. Their journeys sounded more and more alike. In an unguarded moment of thought, it occurred to him that perhaps he had finally found a truly kindred spirit. Then, he realized again what she was, and stopped that thought before it could go any further. "It's always the busy places that show you that people who don't have too much time on their hands don't bother to develop prejudices," he said with a quiet smile.  
  
"Isn't it a wonderful thing?" Tali asked. "Places where anyone can go, anyone at all. I started learning magic there in Waterdeep. Then, once I had a really good handle on shapeshifting, I started traveling. There was so much of the world to see. The Dales, the Sword Coast… I learned about the spelljammers, and took to the stars, hiring on as a sailor, or a soldier…"  
  
She grinned crookedly. "I fought in the Illithid Wars. That's where I met Alton. Oh, now him, you'll have to meet. He's a dragon, of sorts. But I digress." She uncurled her feet and shifted sideways in the chair, draping her legs over the side and lying back. "I came back here from time to time. Well, to the surface, not really here. It was my home. I spent a few years in Kara-Tur, once… I met this kitsune named Kenshiro, and he left me with twins…" She shook her head and laughed. "That's a whole different story in and of itself."  
  
Tarlyn raised an eyebrow curiously and said, "I'm going to want to go back to that, when you have the time." He wrote for a few seconds longer, then looked up at her, blinking. "Illithid wars? You mean you did come back to the Underdark eventually?" He knew of the mind flayers, and the rumors of their cities nearby, but he had never seen one on the surface.  
  
"No," Tali said. "There aren't really that many of them, here. Those that do live on this world tend to keep to their own cities, except when they're hunting or doing business. Out there…" She pointed upwards, and shuddered disgustedly. "Out there, they're a major power, in some places. They sail these horrible, ugly, seashell-shaped ships, and they power them with the lives and minds of slaves. Thankfully, the different hives don't usually work well together, because you can't get two of the big brains to get over their egos and cooperate."  
  
Her eyes darkened, and she frowned as she kept speaking, staring down at her hands before she folded them in her lap. "Once, centuries ago, several of the hives finally did band together. They took over a lot of worlds, and enslaved entire races before anyone organized to stop them. When people realized what was happening… it was war. It was a long, horrible bloody war."  
  
She twirled an end of her cord belt around and between her fingers, her smile fond and faraway. "Alton was a slave on a ship we raided during the Wars. I set him free, I guess, by killing the squid that had a hold on his mind, and he's followed me ever since." She laid her head back against the back of the chair again and murmured, "He's a good man. Dragon. Oh, you know what I mean. He's a good friend. He's stood beside me ever since, except for the time I ran away from him for a few years." A crooked little smirk curled her lips as she added, "And I suspect he would have followed me that time, too, if I hadn't threatened to kill him if he didn't leave me alone."  
  
Tarlyn recorded still more carefully, slowing to get the words exactly as he heard them, and fell silent for several minutes until he finished. "You're saying that the illithids exist beyond our world?" he asked. "They must be terrifying. And this Alton… they actually enslaved a dragon?" His jaw dropped, and he shook his head in wonder as he made notes. "What do they use slaves for, on their ships?"  
  
As she recalled the wars of centuries past, and her many clashes with the mind flayers, Tali's brow furrowed, and she frowned a little. "Some say there's a whole world full of them out there somewhere. Personally, I hope it isn't true. They're horrifying." She shook her head emphatically and gestured toward the lake at the far end of the city, and the island in the center of it. "I have never seen any creature so purely detached. They look at everything the way you or I might look at the cattle out there."  
  
Chuckling softly, she continued, "And Alton… ah, but he's amazing." Her voice was soft with obvious fondness, but her eyes were proud. "He's not a dragon like I'm sure you're picturing, but he is a dragon. His people walk on two legs, the way we do, and they're much smaller than the kind of dragons you're thinking of. He stands…" She looked thoughtful for a moment as she quietly counted. "…fifteen feet or so? I'm not sure. He's huge next to me, but tiny beside the dragons of the surface world here. He's beautiful. He's my oldest friend."  
  
Lost now in the flow of the memories, she spoke rapidly as Tarlyn wrote. "And what they use slaves for… the same things they use slaves for everywhere else, including their cities here. Food, labor, menial tasks, brainwashed soldiers…" She slowed, the fear and disgust becoming evident again in her tone. "But their ships… I don't know how it works, precisely, but somehow their ships can link to the minds of certain slaves. The ship eats their mind and their life for power. It's one of the most horrible things I've ever witnessed."   
  
Memories of the captives she had rescued, many half-insane after the magic that powered the ships had destroyed their minds, played through her mind. Sadly, she finished, "If they're lucky, and someone sets them free… well, the odds are their mind is gone, and you have a brainless, insane child who has no brain left lo learn to live again. Otherwise, it drains them slowly, and you have an empty, mindless shell that dies as soon as there's nothing left to take."  
  
Tarlyn's jaw was tight, his teeth clenched, and he had to slow to keep his writing readable as emotion began to overwhelm him. "To them, we're just fat for their lanterns," he said very quietly. "Because your friend Alton was larger and stronger, he was more useful doing physical work for them. It saved his life."  
  
Softly and sadly, Tali nodded. "It's that simple," she said. "…to them, anyway." She shrugged and grinned crookedly. "So, like I said, somehow I freed him, and he's followed me ever since. I guess it's a sort of life-debt, or something. He won't talk about it. He's just there. He saved my skin more than once, in the last few years of the Wars, and later, when we found a place to settle down."  
  
"He taught me what it was like to be able to rely on someone," she said and chuckled softly. "That… doesn't come easy to our kind, but again, I imagine you know that." Her eyes brightened, then she bowed her head and whispered a quiet confession. "I love him so…"  
  
[Yep. Still to be continued...] 


	5. Friends, Love, and Power

Tarlyn laid down his pen and took a sip of his own wine, then flexed his fingers, picked up the pen again, and kept writing. A moment later, he stopped and looked up. "Tell me about Alton," he said. "What kind of man… er, dragon, is he?" He sat, pen ready, watching and listening.  
  
Twirling a stray lock of her own hair around her fingertips, Tali looked pensive as she sat in silence for a few minutes. "He's very strong," she said at last. "Not just physically, though he's definitely that too. There's an inner strength he has, a way of just dealing with what life hands him, without tears or complaint…" A fond warmth lit her eyes as she described her old friend. "Friendly, though. He likes people. He likes to tend bar, of all things." She chuckled softly. "We ran a little tavern together, he and I."  
  
She tilted her head to one side and added softly, "Protective, too. Of me and mine, at least." She shrugged slightly, and looked at the ends of her hair as she twirled them between her fingers. "At first, I think, he thought he owed me. Then we got to be friends, and we just watched out for each other. We still do." A grin spread across her face. "He's incredible in a fight. He doesn't like to fight, though, unless he's forced to."  
  
As his pen scratched across the page, Tarlyn nodded silently, listening until she had finished, then smiled. "You really seem to admire that about him," he said. "That he's strong without needing to show it by force." Thoughtfully, he blinked, then asked, "That's one of your lessons to our people, then, isn't it? That shows of force are not to be confused with strength."  
  
Tali nodded firmly, and gazed silently at Tarlyn for a moment. It hardly seemed possible to her that a cry for help would have led her to what appeared to be the first person to truly completely understand her. After a moment, she smiled approvingly, and nodded. "Well, yes. Force is a last resort when you have no other solution, not a way of life. Strength…" She thought about it for a moment, then continued, "it isn't necessarily being able to defeat by force. Strength is knowing that you don't always have to, that often there is a better way."  
  
Tarlyn's hand speeded again, and he nodded softly, returning her smile. "The surface people consider shows of force acts of desperation," he said. "They motivate only in that they make resistance difficult and risky. They do nothing to convince people why they should agree with a course of action." He shrugged, and laughed quietly. "And if people don't agree, why, they'll never really cooperate, only refuse to resist. It's like asking orcs to build your house!"  
  
"Exactly!" Tali exclaimed emphatically. "Cooperation is everything. No one can live alone forever." Gesturing widely, she pointed out at the city. "And what our people have never realized is that it would be so much easier to work together…" She shook her head and brushed her hair back behind one ear. "We could accomplish so much if we could just stop fighting amongst ourselves, and wasting time and energy on meaningless power struggles, and turn all that effort to working together instead."  
  
She shook her head sadly. "If there's one thing I've learned over the centuries, it's that if you spend your whole life fighting, you'll only die bitter and tired, with nothing to leave behind but stories that will eventually be forgotten."  
  
He turned the page and kept writing without pause as he said quietly, "Perhaps…" even knowing that Lolth was dead, he hesitated to speak the name. "Perhaps she kept things that way to keep everyone too busy to see the madness around them." He smirked faintly. "That's how the warlords of the southlands do it. They keep their servants fighting amongst themselves, too busy worrying about their lives to realize they've been enslaved, or focus any time on attacking their master. Perhaps that was the entire reason…"  
  
Tali stared at the dying light of the pillar of Narbondel for a silent moment, then said, "Probably. It's a tactic people use everywhere. As long as our attention was turned toward each other, we'd never be able to see what she was doing to us." Chuckling quietly, she shrugged. "I only wanted to set it right. I didn't bargain on…" She gestured out at the city again, then down at herself, now laughing. "…this. But here I am…"  
  
"What was it," Tarlyn asked as he wrote, "…that she took from our people, in exchange for the occasional gifts of power?" He was both fascinated and horrified. The goddess was confirming so many of his old suspicions, that life as they had known it had been insane. Was there a reason why, or was it all a sick amusement? "Did you ever find out?" he inquired.  
  
Looking away from the city at last, Tali tilted her head to one side and regarded Tarlyn thoughtfully for a moment. He was asking a lot of questions, she thought, that most of their kind wouldn't dare. It pleased her, and she smiled in spite of herself as she answered honestly, "As best as I can figure, her power came from our belief in her. What she gave to the priestesses was really just a tiny fragment of what she was taking from every one of us."  
  
Tarlyn startled, and almost dropped his pen. Grinning sheepishly, he recovered and kept writing. "The gods need worshippers?" he asked incredulously. From anyone but a goddess, the idea would have been blasphemy. He was astonished that she would be so frank about the source of her power.  
  
She tucked a few more strands of hair behind her ears, shifted in the chair again, and leaned toward him, curling her feet beneath her again. "I still don't know exactly how it all works," she admitted. "Set would be the one to ask about that." She smiled faintly at the shudder Tarlyn failed to repress. "He's older than anything, I think. Maybe older than everything. If anyone knows for sure, he does."  
  
"As I understand it, though," she said as she watched him write, "…yes. It's worship that makes a god strong. I don't think we die if people forget us, mind you, but we become stronger when people think of us. The more people there are, the stronger we become."  
  
Tarlyn simply nodded as he wrote hurriedly. "And I suppose, then, fear counts as much as genuine devotion… and is easier to gather en masse, with little effort."  
  
Tali blinked, a little surprised that he was picking it up so quickly, then grinned and nodded. "It doesn't take much to scare people. You can do it without trying. We both know that." She drummed a fingertip on the arm of her chair, still nodding. "But the flip side of that is that when someone breaks free and defies that fear, you have to work a lot harder to squash what they symbolize. Look at Drizzt. How many died trying to destroy him? Look at me. She started a war spanning worlds and planes trying to get rid of me. I don't know your story yet, but I'd be very surprised if you weren't just as good an example of that."  
  
"Fear…" she began slowly, "…is easy to get in large numbers. But you need large numbers, and you can't let anyone openly defy it. True devotion takes a lot more work to inspire, but true faith is a lot stronger than simple cowering fear."  
  
Tarlyn nodded, his expression a little sick. "Like the illithids," he muttered. "We gave her the energy she fed on. We were fat for her lanterns." It was his turn to sound disgusted now as he spoke, his pen pausing for a moment. "She kept us running and backstabbing and churning in a huge machine of pain and misery. Tore families apart, turned woman against man, old against young…"  
  
"Horrible, isn't it?" Tali said softly and sadly. "All the things we endured, all the pain and hatred and distrust we grew up with… it was all just to feed her fires." She clenched one hand into a fist and rested it on the arm of the chair with a sigh. "I don't want it to be like that anymore. I only wanted to make it right. I didn't know this was going to happen when I decided to take her on. All I wanted was to set myself and my people free."  
  
"What did you think would happen?" Tarlyn asked. He looked up from his writing for a moment, and gazed at Tali quietly while he waited for her to answer. This was becoming much more of a story than he'd counted on, but he didn't mind. He was beginning to hope it would take even longer, and give him a good reason to stay and listen to her.  
  
It caught him by surprise when she threw her head back and laughed for several minutes, then regarded him with a sheepish grin. "Honestly? I hadn't thought that far ahead! I guess I thought I'd kill her and everyone would be free, or more likely, I'd die trying and my worries would be over." Still chuckling, she shrugged and admitted, "It was retribution, pure and simple. Retribution for what she'd done to me, to my mother, to Mourn, to Drizzt, to Dusty… to who knows how many others individually, and to our people as a whole." Smirking, she added, "I wish I could say I had some grand plan, but it was really pretty simple. I wanted justice."  
  
Tarlyn hurried to catch up, chuckling himself. "You knew things would be better, no matter how they turned out afterward." He blinked at the unfamiliar name, then asked, "Who's… Daz'ti?"  
  
"Dusty," Tali corrected, and even a blind man couldn't have missed the fire in her eyes as she smiled, then laid back in her chair and sighed. "Now there's a story. My Dusty… my beautiful wolf…" She chuckled softly. "He is… many things. He is my best friend, my truest confidante, my partner… and my husband, for the last six hundred years and change."   
  
She nodded confidently. "You'll meet him, eventually. He does a lot of good for us on the surface. He's a wonderful diplomat, and a hell of a negotiator. He's always been..." Her brow furrowed as she searched for the right words to describe him. "…extremely charismatic," she finally finished, with a crooked little smile that hinted at much more. Even so, her voice was soft and passionate as she murmured, "I'd die without him…"  
  
"A different sort of love than your dragon, Alton, then?" he inquired, nodding slowly. He took a quick sip of his wine, and then returned to his writing. "And you say he's a wolf?" First a dragon, now a wolf – the lady had unusual taste in companions, it seemed. He smiled faintly as he shook off the disappointment, and supposed he was silly to think she'd be interested in him anyway.  
  
Tali quirked an eyebrow ever so slightly as she caught his self-reproachful thought, and her cheeks colored again. She cleared her throat a little and looked down at her hands, half hoping he didn't notice, and half hoping he did. "Alton is… I guess the best way to describe it is that he's like a brother to me, the way that the surface people see family. The way Mourn saw family."  
  
"And Dusty is…" She closed her eyes and sighed, smiling once more. "He's my life. My world. He's the reason I've lasted this long." She chuckled and nodded softly. "And yes, he's a wolf, but one like a man." She bit her lip as she tried to decide how best to explain it. "Like a werewolf, sort of? Only not. He's… well, as much as I hate to draw the parallel… you saw Set. He's like that, only he's a wolf."  
  
"From another place up in the stars?" Tarlyn asked, then blinked. "Like a werewolf… you mean, something like the beastmen of the Wemic plains?" He was trying to picture this wolf-man, and he was grasping for a starting place that didn't involve the snake-eyed jackal-man who had surprised him on his arrival.  
  
Tali thought about it for a moment, then nodded slowly. "Something like that, yeah. The place where we met, there were so many of them, all different kinds…" She chuckled. "It was like… a bizarre crossroads at the center of a hundred strange worlds. There were wolves, dogs, cats, anything you can imagine, but they were all people. There were other shapeshifters, but none quite like me. There was an entire underground city full of the undead…"  
  
Tarlyn nodded once more, and blinked up at her for a moment before he looked down again. "How did you meet him?" he asked.  
  
Tali shrugged and laughed softly. "It was nothing all that dramatic, at first. I was relaxing with some friends I'd made, in a sort of common area in the center of town, when all of a sudden, there he was…" Her expression went soft, her voice dreamy, as she murmured, "…this tall, beautiful wolf-man. He had long, golden hair, and these haunting eyes… he came over and introduced himself to me." She grinned dreamily. "Dusty Rancourt… Oh, I was positively smitten, but he was married, and I was involved with someone, so we just made friends…"  
  
The image roused Tarlyn's curiosity. "A romance," he said. "Just like the stories." He lifted the book, and began to move his pen in wide sweeps across the page, smiling a little as he asked, "Was it considered strange to love someone so different from you?" He couldn't imagine a place where that would have been easily accepted, but he supposed anything was possible.  
  
Tali shook her head emphatically. "Not there, That was a lot of the reason why Alton and I settled there. It was such an open place. Everyone was different… and that was okay." She grinned and rearranged the folds of her dress. "You could do what you wanted, be who and what you wanted, spend time where you wanted, with who you wanted… and no one ever blinked an eye." Still smiling, she sighed wistfully. "Oh, that… that was true freedom. For the first time in my life, I wasn't an enemy. I wasn't a curiosity. I was finally, for the first time in my life, just Tali."  
  
[ Still more to come… ] 


	6. The Nature of Love

Tarlyn's hand jumped across the page, and he wrote a few more lines, then returned to the larger shape. "What were Dusty's people like?" he asked. "Was he like them?" He was still having trouble imagining this enchanting wolf-man, much less an entire race of them. It was an interesting, if unsettling, image.  
  
Tali chuckled softly and shrugged slightly. "As much alike as any family is, I guess," she said thoughtfully. "I met some of his children. He didn't really have a family, beyond that. If you mean like other wolves…" She tilted her head to one side and considered it for a moment, then said slowly, "Well, to all external appearance, I suppose he was. The same way someone could look at you, or me, and say 'Drow', they could look at him, or anyone who was like him, and say 'wolf'."  
  
As Tarlyn tried to picture it, he glanced up at Tali. If this Dusty was in all ways a wolff, and was the goddess' husband… A particularly bestial image came to mind, and wide-eyed, he shook it away. It wasn't precisely upsetting, but it wasn't something he wanted to think about, especially while she was looking at him that way. He coughed discreetly, then, grinning, asked, "What about him drew your attention at first, and then what about him made him so special?"  
  
Tali's cheeks flushed, and she bit her lower lip in a mildly embarrassed grin. "In the beginning… well. It was pretty shallow, I guess," she confessed. "I thought he was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. The silver fur, the hair, the eyes… and oh, he has this smile…" Wistfully, she sighed. "Over time, though, I got to know him. He was decent, and kind, and brilliant. He had so much in his heart, so much love, so much desire to make the world better for others… He was as beautiful inside as he was outside."  
  
Intrigued, Tarlyn blinked. So the wolf, it seemed, truly was much more than a wolf, at least in her eyes. "And you already felt that way… you must have been drawn to one another."  
  
"We were," Tali said with a nod and a smile. "I know that now." Her eyes saddened again, and she laughed faintly. "But it took us eight years to figure it out. I didn't think he wanted me." She folded her arms across her chest and hugged herself, remembering her despair. "Other things happened in between that made me even more convinced of that. I died to save another friend I cared very much about, and I thought there was no way Dusty could ever accept the monster I'd become."  
  
Tarlyn nodded understandingly as he wrote, then stopped and shook his head. He wasn't quite certain he'd heard that correctly. "You died?" he asked, and blinked up at her. "Did you ascend to the planes?" A demon goddess who had transcended death, then become the savior of her people… this was becoming a much more incredible story than he'd counted on.  
  
Still hugging herself, Tali shook her head. She was silent for a moment, then took a deep breath and released it in a heavy sigh. "No," she said, finally. "I died, or I suppose I should say that my body did, but I went on. I mentioned the city of the undead… For a few centuries, I lived there. Would you like to see what I was, before I became what I am?"  
  
Tarlyn found himself startled once more, but forced himself to keep writing. "You were undead?" he asked, blue eyes wide. He remembered the warmth of her hand, and the softness of her leg when she laid his head there after she'd healed him. "But…" he began, confused, "You're not anymore, are you? You felt so alive…"  
  
"I was," Tali confirmed. "I had to save someone I cared for, and that was the price I paid for it." She shook her head emphatically as she continued. "Now, no. Now, I just am. What I am, I'm not completely sure yet, but I am, and I don't have to live the way I used to."   
  
She caught Tarlyn's gaze and looked deeply into his eyes as she changed yet again. Her ebony skin paled to a soft ashen grey, and her eyes darkened to a dull red gleam. She parted her lips and traced the tip of her tongue over small but prominent fangs. "It's pretty, or so people told me…" she murmured, "…but, truth told, I despised having to live on the blood of others." For a moment, she held the form, staring at him silently, then changed back. "I like being alive again."  
  
Shivering, Tarlyn blinked into her eyes. "Don't move…" he whispered as she changed. He flipped the page and scribbled frantically, then as she changed back, smiled. "There. I think I captured it well." He tilted the book toward her. On the page was a quick, rough, but recognizable sketch of her vampiric form. "You became…" He shivered again. "…a vampire, then. And you did it for someone you loved… Alton, or Dusty, or someone else?"  
  
Tali reached out and touched the sketch with a fingertip, then smiled softly. "You're quite the artist," she commented. "It's beautiful. Thank you."  
  
"Not much of one," Tarlyn protested, blushing faintly. "I did field sketches on the road, a little, to remember what I saw."  
  
Tali brushed her fingertip over the hand that held the pen as she withdrew, and then sighed softly. "I like it," she murmured, then shrugged. "But your question… it was someone else. Just a friend, then, but one I loved dearly." She chuckled and admitted, "We were lovers, later, but that's not really important now." She stared down at her hands for a moment, then continued. "He was undead himself, a shade, a being of shadows. The only name anyone ever called him was Trenchcoat." She smiled fondly. "I was the only one who ever knew his real name…"  
  
Tarlyn marveled silently as he began to write again. "You've known a lot of love over the years," he said with a smile. "I guess when you move around that much, it's better if you love who you find yourself with." He paused, looked up, and asked, "You said Dusty is still with you. Did he follow you to Menzoberranzan?"  
  
He did," Tali said with a grin, nodding happily. "They all three did. I hope you'll stay long enough to meet them all, sometime." She idly toyed with a fold of her dress as she spoke, laughing a little. "They all stay busy nowadays." Her voice softened again, and she smiled warmly. "I've been lucky. I've known some wonderful people, and I've learned to love in ways that I don't think most of our people have ever understood." She turned to glance out over the city again, and finished hopefully, "…but maybe someday they will."  
  
He raised an eyebrow, and turned over the page, jotting notes in tiny, focused rows of print flush to the upper edge of the new page. "How do you keep your males from competing for you?" He blinked. "The surface people form families in pairs, to solve that problem. Wouldn't things look like the Spider War all over again, if your males have to contend among themselves for your attention?"  
  
Tali shook her head and smiled quietly. "There's no need for them to compete. What I share with each of them is completely different. I don't love one any less, or give one any less, because of the others. Losing one wouldn't increase what I share with the others... neither would loving another diminish it."   
  
She shrugged. "It's not about greed, or about someone else taking 'your share'... it's about caring, and understanding, and sharing. You can love and admire many different things in many different people. Limits on who and how much you love are... artifical."  
  
  
Tarlyn copied the words carefully, brow furrowing a little in thought. His was silent for a few moments, staring down at the page, and his pen hovering an inch above the surface. His breath rose and fell quietly. "Is it really so easy as that?" he finally asked.  
  
Tali thought about it for a moment, gathering the right words. "I wouldn't say easy," she said finally. "There's a degree of understanding that a lot of people don't possess. Jealousy is an ingrained reaction. The surface people are taught from birth that you can only love certain people, and you can only express it in certain ways. Our people..." She shrugged and frowned distastefully. "Our people are taught from birth that love doesn't even really exist. There is only desire, and control, and those were kept subject to the whims of the women."  
  
His pen moved slowly, the words heavy on his mind. "What is love, then?" he asked.  
  
Smiling faintly, Tali looked off into the distance. "As I see it..." she began, "...love is a connection. It's the deepest kind of empathy. It's truly understanding someone." She tilted her head to one side. "It's both sharing a very deep bond that ties you closely to someone, and freedom to be yourselves separately." She thought a moment longer, then added, "It's a lot of things. Mainly, though, it's about common ground and caring about each other's happiness."  
  
He nodded slowly, the words beginning to flow from the pen again. "A far cry from ssin'ssrigg." he said. "Tell me, where did you find this love? Did you always know it, or were you shown it by someone?"  
  
Her smile became warm and happy again as she nodded, slowly. "I guess you'd have to say I first learned from watching the people on the surface. It was a beautiful thing to see people together, without the games of power and dominance that you and I grew up with. They cared for one another without expecting anything in return."   
  
She closed her eyes and sighed. "Oh, there was still possessiveness, mind you, and I accepted that this was just the way it was." She laughed softly and shrugged. "I came to understand family love, but the other kinds of love... I believed it was only right to love one person. I could never share what I shared with one, with someone else. And then, there was Dusty..."  
  
Tarlyn nodded as he wrote. "He showed you that love?" He smiled. He was more and more intrigued by this mysterious wolf as he recorded her words. "How did he show you this love? What made him different from the other people you saw, the love of the surface people that you saw around you?  
  
Tali tapped a fingertip on the arm of the chair. "He taught me something very important. You see, it's true that the love you have for one person, you can't share with another person. The way you love, and the reasons you love, are unique to the two of you." She opened her eyes again and smiled at him. "But that's no reason to stop loving. You can still love others just as much... and it will always be in a completely different way, each unique to itself. You'll only make yourselves miserable, and probably miss out on something beautiful, if you deny its expression."   
  
She tapped her finger against the chair more emphatically as she made her point. "He had no limits. No jealousy. No greed. He showed me that as long as there were no lies, no games, as long as everyone involved was honest and accepting, then there was not one good reason not to show love as freely as we felt it." She shrugged. "There's the fallacy, you see. It's not that people don't love... it's that they've been taught not to express it."  
  
"Hold still," he said, and lifted the book against his chest, eyes rapidly flickering between Tali and the page below. "I had to draw you. If only you could see...well, I suppose you can." He turned the book in his hands, and there on the page, scribbly and hasty in wild ink tangents, was her face, mid-speech, eyes and mouth glowing. He shrugged a little, grinned, and resumed writing, finishing the paragraph. "Wow." He said after a few moments. "Is this part of being a wolf? It is something we 'greater races' have perhaps lost over the millennia?"  
  
Tali moved in her chair and leaned toward him to see. The ends of her hair brushed the back of his hand as she looked at the page. "Do I really look like that?" she mused. "You make me look so pretty..." Blushing again, she bowed her head, then sat back in her chair once more. "I don't think it's a wolf thing, really," she said. "I've met others of his kind who behaved like all the rest of the surface people. I've met some who behaved like us. I think it's just an understanding that people have to reach on their own. You can point the way to someone, but they have to grasp it for themselves."  
  
Tarlyn's ears pinkened a little. "That's what I see." he said. "I don't suppose any one person could tell you what you look like, and be completely right. But yes. You are pretty. I...." He chuckled as the words failed him. "I can't believe this is a surprise to you."   
  
He nodded again, resuming his writing, jotting a note or two beneath the picture first. "I'm guessing, from what you've said, that he showed this to you by example. How did it first come up in your life?"  
  
Tali shrugged and grinned crookedly. "I look in the mirror, and I see just me. I see the same old Tali I've seen for centuries. It's never been anything special, really, to me..." She glanced up at him, ears pink, and murmured, "...but I'm really glad you think so."   
  
She watched him write for a moment and collected her thoughts. "I met people he loved," she explained. "I watched him with them. Friends that were important to him... some that were lovers... In truth, I expected to be upset. I expected to be jealous. But I wasn't. It was beautiful. He was happy, he was making others happy, and never once did he love me any differently or any less than he always had."  
  
"I do." Tarlyn said softly, the beginning of the sentence more tentative than the end. "Very much so." He blinked, and nodded, writing without lowering his eyes to the page again. "Was there ever jealousy? Competition? Perhaps not with you, perhaps...er, among the others? What came of it?"  
  
Tali bit her lip and blushed even more for a moment, then grinned and tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear. "I'm sure, on some level, there may have been a little jealousy. I never saw it, though. He's always very straightforward about who he is and how he lives, and he would never be interested in someone who couldn't accept that." She shrugs. "Love is accepting someone for who and what they are, not what you want them to be."  
  
He blinked, and nodded slowly. "You make it sound so simple." he said. "It sounds like things I've heard of from the Great Mountain, and the Endless Plains, but can ordinary people really live that way?" He shook his head slowly. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to contradict you, it's just that...even things that are beautiful for a while, people have a way of ruining, losing sight of. People get greedy, or jealous, or argue, or fight. Friendship, families, homes get torn apart by it every day." He blinked up at her, his brow furrowed a little. "And I'd think that someone who loved many people that deeply would be even more likely to see it than someone who didn't."  
  
Softly, and a little sadly, Tali nodded. "It sounds so easy, doesn't it? I wish it were..." She gestured toward the city. "I wish I could just tell all of them, 'See this beautiful thing? If you would just understand, you could see it, you could have it...' But it's not like that. People are taught so many false limits, and they're taught that need and desire and possession are the same thing as love... and it's not the same thing at all."   
  
She shook her head. "People... hearts... aren't property, but they're taught to treat each other that way. So much of what we see as 'the way things are' is really just what we're told it's supposed to be."  
  
He blinked, and looked down over the city, pausing to sketch the skyline. "It's been so long. I'd almost forgotten how beautiful it was." He blinked, chuckled once to himself, and nodded again. "And you're showing them, through your own life, through your words. But they still don't listen." He blinked, thoughtfully. "If it really is all false, why do people hold onto it so tightly in the face of truth?"  
  
Tali watched him sketch, with a curious little smile, and said softly, "It's not easy to change something that's so fundamental a part of an entire culture. People see, but it's easier not to believe." She shrugs. "It's easier to keep teaching your children the same old things, that the old way is the right way because that's how it's always been, than it is to think about it for a moment, and you know why?" She paused for a beat, then answered her own question. "Because that means admitting that you might have been wrong."  
  
He listened to that, and considered it before he replied. "...and it means having to stand up and defend your views without help, alone." he said. "It means standing against the tide." He began to speak, then chuckled, remembering she'd surely seen the tide and didn't need an explanation of the metaphor. "It means being alone, and being the enemy of those who see difference as a threat."  
  
She nodded a little. "That's a difficult thing to do. It takes courage to be different, because being different often means you're alone... and being alone can be pretty frightening." She shook her head, then, and said quietly, "Even with all the love I've had, I've always been alone. There's no one like me, as far as I know, anywhere, so I guess I'm used to it."   
  
She shrugged. "But I'm not going to force my views on anyone. That's not what I am, you know? Hell, I never thought I'd end up leading... but if I have to, I'm going to lead by example. I don't want people to just accept what I say. I want people to watch, and learn, and understand."  
  
He finished the sentence, blinked down at the filling page, and nodded again, softly. "I have to meet your family someday." he said, and grinned crookedly. That, he thought, would likely be another book in itself. He looked up at her for a moment, nodded again, and turned back to the page. "What made you decide to return when you did?"  
  
"It was time…" Tali replied quietly.  
  
[You know it. More on the way.] 


	7. A Leap of Faith

"It was time," Tali said again, softly, and shrugged. "Lolth had found me, a thousand worlds away, and I was never going to be any more ready. It became a matter of acting while I still had the nerve to do it." She chuckled and shook her head. "I mean, for heaven's sake, I was taking on a goddess, and what was I?"  
  
She grinned a crooked, sheepish grin. "All I was, was some shapeshifting vampire. Sure, I spent the centuries hunting and killing mortal evils, because it made me feel a little better about needing blood to live." Now laughing as she spoke, she confessed, "It was insane, and I knew it. It was one of those 'now or never' moments."  
  
Tarlyn nodded, grinning a little himself. "You just did it… and I guess, from what I'm hearing, you were a little surprised that it worked."  
  
"More than a little!" Tali exclaimed, still chuckling and nodding emphatically. "I mean, on some level, I never thought it could work. I was sure I'd die. But at least if I did, I'd die trying, and I'd die facing her, instead of running away." She paused to catch her breath, and her expression grew somber again. "And I would have, too. There were just so many factors that I never even counted on."  
  
"I can only imagine," Tarlyn said, though he was indeed having trouble imagining it. How could this lovely woman, sitting beside him completely unarmed and making such sweeping proclamations about love and freedom, have taken on the Queen of Chaos and won? "So tell me," he asked, "…how does one kill a god?"  
  
Tali took a deep breath, then released it in a sigh and grinned. "With a hell of a lot of help," she said frankly, then shrugged and returned to gazing quietly down at her hands. "In the end, it was a fight just like any other, both physical and magical, except that it was in her territory, while the others took on her creations." She shivered a little, remembering the long, bloody battles and her own brush with death. "It was war, make no mistake about it."  
  
Tarlyn nodded thoughtfully. "Just larger, stronger, harder to defeat, I suppose…" he said, then chuckled a little. She made taking on Lolth sound like a simple battle between the city's houses. "…but not all that different from anyone else." He wrote for a moment longer, then looked up at her and asked quietly, "How much of the mystery of the divine is really all that mysterious?"  
  
"You're catching on, sugar…" Tali said, then blinked and blushed a little. She hadn't intended to voice the endearment, but there it was. "…that's exactly it," she finished, compulsively re-tucking her hair behind her ears. "See, we're not these mysterious, unreachable beings. We're people, too. We live, and we think, and we feel, just like everyone else."  
  
Tarlyn's eyes widened a little, and he blushed. Did she just call him… no. He wasn't going to think about it. He merely smiled. "I guess you handle it the way anyone else does, when people want more from you than you can give." She shrugged. "Some people wallow in the attention, and others turn bitter and withdraw. It's difficult to be the object of fascination for any length of time."  
  
Tali watched his face color, and bit her lip to hide the grin, then murmured, "Yeah. I never want to be too self-centered, or too distant. I only ever wanted to set things right."  
  
"I think that's what makes you different," Tarlyn commented. "Anyone would want to listen to you, and what you say is so reasonable, so straightforward. You're sharing what you believe in with the people who would…" He paused, and blinked, as it dawned on him "…want to help you…"  
  
A smirk curled Tali's lip for a moment as she considered that. "I say what I think. And what I feel," she said. "I always have, and I suspect I always will. What's the point in playing games?" She shrugged and twirled her belt around her fingertips again. "It would be a waste of my time and yours."  
  
Tarlyn chuckled to himself. She was being remarkably open, he thought. "There are not a lot of gods who'll answer questions about their plans," he said. He looked at her silently for a few seconds, then the question came before he realized he'd found the courage to ask it. "So, what are your plans now?"  
  
Gazing into the distance as she toyed with her belt, Tali was silent for a moment before she spoke again. "Right now…" She gestured out at the city once more. "…they need me. I want to change things. It's going to be slow going, but I want to do away with the oppression and the backstabbing and the nastiness that's become the Drow way of life."  
  
"I want to see everyone treated like people, no matter who they are." She turned her gaze back to him, and smiled. "Male, female, child, elder… I want everyone to have a place. And eventually…" Her smile grew hopeful. "…eventually, maybe we can get the other races of the world to see that we've changed, and see us as people, not just monsters in the darkness."  
  
Tarlyn was silent for several minutes as he wrote, and digested her words. It sounded like such a beautiful vision. If only he could do something to make it come true, just to see that smile in her eyes. He wondered for a moment what he might be committing himself too, then looked up at her and asked earnestly, "What kinds of help do you need?"  
  
Silently, they stared into each other's eyes for a moment, then Tali's expression softened. "I need good people," she said at last, holding his gaze as she spoke. "I need people who understand. But people who know how to think, too, and who can help show the way to others. Show them how to think for themselves, show them by example that the way to live is to never accept or follow anything blindly…" She paused, then added, "…not even my word."  
  
Still gazing into her eyes, Tarlyn nodded, then smiled. "All right. I can do that," he said, softly and confidently. "I can try, at least." Maybe he was following her into something even more dangerous than the dungeons of Thay, but he was sure by now that it was the right thing to do.  
  
Tali gazed at him even more intently for a moment, her eyes widening. Her voice was soft and astonished as she whispered, "You'd do that, for me?"  
  
Tarlyn laughed a little at the question. Could she really be all that surprised? "It's true," he said, still marveling at the fact that she didn't realize how obvious it was. "It needs to be heard. Of course I will. I mean…" He shrugged and grinned a little. "…not that anyone's going to listen to me anyway, but I guess it's one more voice than you have now…"  
  
In silence, Tali reached out and brushed the fingertips of one hand gently along his cheek. "Thank you…" she breathed after a minute had passed. "It means a lot to me, that you'd really want to help."  
  
Shivering at her touch, Tarlyn closed his eyes and turned his face slightly away. "Lady, I'm not sure I'll help much," he admitted, "…but it's a message that needs to be spoken." He held his breath and held perfectly still until she drew her hand away, and his pulse raced. "You came to me, and you didn't charge me with a quest, or command me to change my life, or anything. You answered my questions. You saved my life." At last, he looked back at her, flushed and smiling. "What less could I do?"  
  
"You could walk away," Tali said with a little shrug as she smoothed her dress. "You still can. You always can. That's the beauty of free will." She smiled quietly. "You have free will. Everyone has free will. There's always a choice… and you chose to help me, and I am… honored."  
  
Tarlyn raised an eyebrow a little at that. She was honored? He smiled back at her and assured her, "I'm not the kind of person who just walks away." He looked down at the book, and at the pen still in his hands, both all but forgotten as he'd stared into her eyes. "I didn't write all this down just to throw it away. You saved my life. I'm going to find a way to thank you for it."  
  
Tali nodded, and smiled at him. Then bowed her head as her cheeks pinkened even through her dark skin. Her eyes looked surprisingly young as she half glanced up again, gazing at him through a wispy fringe of her hair. "If you really want to thank me…" she breathed, smiling hopefully, "…stay with me for a while?"  
  
Tarlyn's breath caught in his throat as he found himself staring into her eyes again. "I… you just…" He blinked, eyes wide, and even laughed once, quietly before he stopped himself. "Of course," he said in an incredulous whisper as he gazed into her eyes. "Of course I'll stay… if that's what you want, then you'll have it."  
  
Tali's hopeful smile broke into a wide grin, and she slid out of her chair to kneel on the terrace beside his. He barely had a moment to lay the book and the pen aside as she slid her arms around his waist. "I'm so glad…" she whispered as she laid her head on his chest. "That would make me very, very happy."  
  
For a moment, Tarlyn simply shivered as he struggled to figure out how he should react, then he tentatively folded his arms around her, his hands resting between her shoulderblades, and hugged her loosely in answer. His breath quivered, his palms were cool against her skin, and his mind began to race as quickly as his pulse already was. "Of c-course.." he stammered breathlessly, "…if you… want me to…"  
  
Tali simply stayed that way for several silent minutes, her own heart and thoughts racing in response to his embrace. Finally, she looked up at him and opened her eyes, smiling and nodding as she gazed at him once more. "I do. I'd like that… an awful lot." She bit her lip and blushed furiously, but didn't look away this time. "I hope I'm not… that is… I mean…" she stammered, then grinned a little and murmured shyly, "I don't want to be too forward, or for you to feel like you have to, but you're so different…"  
  
Tarlyn raised an eyebrow, the uneven line accenting his already lopsided smile. "Queen of the Underdark, and you're asking a male if you're being too forward." He couldn't help laughing softly at the irony. "My lady," he said softly with a hint of a smirk, "…if you're a demon about to eat me, it's too late anyway. I…" He blushed, ears and cheeks reddening, and finished in a whisper. "…I can't imagine a thing you would do that I wouldn't enjoy far too much for my own good, so I absolve you in advance."  
  
He smiled down at her, lost for a few seconds in silent wonder as he brushed his fingertips over her soft, dark skin. "I'll stay with you…" he vowed, "…and I doubt I'll ever want to leave, no matter what your wolf or dragon or spectre have to say about it."  
  
Tali just shook her head a little and smiled up at him. "Too much time elsewhere… or perhaps just enough. I think, and I feel, like a woman, not a Drow woman, I think." She chuckled a little and squeezed her arms around his waist again, then winked. "Forgive me for it later, if you still think there's anything that needs to be forgiven." She blinked then, laughed quietly, and shook her head. "They won't hurt you. In fact, I rather suspect they'll like you."  
  
Tarlyn was still shivering – holding her this close was dizzying, and he was rapidly becoming too aroused to hide it much longer, even though he knew he wouldn't act impulsively. "More woman than any world is ready for, I'd imagine…" he breathed, leaning down until his nose nearly touched hers. Again, he brushed his fingers over her bare back, then impulsively whispered "I… ah… I used to be a stroker, you know…"  
  
Tali nodded a little up at him and whispered, "You have the hands for it, I can tell…" She quirked an eyebrow and grinned. "Maybe sometime, if you want to, you could show me…" She reached up and brushed a fingertip along the line of his cheekbone. "Right now, though…" she said softly and sincerely, "…let me take care of you. You must be exhausted and sore, and I've kept you up talking half the night already…"  
  
Tarlyn couldn't stifle the little whimper that came to his lips as he realized what she'd just offered him. "You'd… let me… oh, my skies…" His hands clenched against her back for a second as he tensed and pressed her close without thinking, and his eyes went wide as he felt her thigh pressing against his… and higher, revealing just how excited he was. "Oh no, I'm sorry, I…" he stammered, blushing fiercely, then simply lowered his eyes. "…well, not that it's anything to be ashamed of, I guess…"  
  
Tali simply curled a finger under his chin and tilted his face up to meet her eyes. There was no offense there as she smiled brightly and warmly. "Yes… I would." She shivered a little herself, but didn't move away. Instead, she laid gently against him, keeping her arms draped around his waist. "Don't apologize," she whispered. "I'm…" she paused for a breath to look for the right words. "…tremendously flattered…"  
  
Caught by surprise again, Tarlyn stared at her, wide eyed, for the space of a heartbeat, then swallowed hard. He said a brief prayer in his mind, then tightened his arms around her, leaned forward, and touched his lips to hers…  
  
[Witty comment here. Still more to come.] 


	8. Confessions

Tali slipped one hand upward and curled it into Tarlyn's hair as they embraced. The kiss was tentative at first, undemanding, then melting stronger as both grew more confident. When they drew apart, breathless and trembling, several minutes later, she smiled shakily and murmured, "Perhaps we should go someplace a bit more… private…"  
  
Tarlyn simply nodded mutely, his heart pounding. He wondered for a moment if he hadn't died after all, but he couldn't think of a thing he'd done to merit a reward like this. Gods alone knew what had possessed him, he thought, then stopped and laughed at himself silently. Gods knew, indeed.  
  
Easing up to her feet, Tali reluctantly let him go. Once she was standing, she reached out and took his hand. Her smile was no longer shy as she whispered, "Come with me…" and led him inside. They went through a sitting room, then out into the center of one of the stalactites that formed the ends of the terrace. Instead of the traditional bare levitation tube of Drow architecture, this one was wide and open, with a staircase spiraling up along the wall.  
  
"Some of my friends don't levitate so well…" she chuckled, "…so there are stairs." She shrugged and grinned playfully. "Me… I prefer the old fashioned way," she said with a wink, then wrapped an arm around his waist and leapt off the stairs.  
  
Still silent and lost in wonder, Tarlyn just blinked and stared as she led him inside. "It's beautiful," he finally murmured, then smiled and stepped off the stairs with her. "You built this just like the towers surface-side…" He slipped his arm around her waist as well, and watched the floor fall away from them as they rose, then came to rest on the highest landing of the spiral stair.  
  
With a flushed, excited smile, Tali opened the door and led him inside, then gestured around with her free hand. "Home sweet home," she commented. 'Home' was a high-ceilinged room carved into the stone, with another unusual bit of architecture: windows that overlooked the city. The furniture, too, was unusual, in the style of the surface people, and the bed was clearly made for regular use by someone quite a bit larger than a Drow. Candles flickered dimly on almost every flat surface, and a pile of unusual-looking cushions dominated one corner.  
  
"It's so… comfortable looking!" Tarlyn exclaimed, and smiled approvingly. "I always thought the Academy receiving room looked so cold and unwelcoming…" He shrugged and chuckled. "…but come to think of it, so did much of the city, back then." He regarded the pile of cushions with a raised eyebrow, then shook his head, deciding not to ask. "A bedroom… a place to sleep… It really isn't so different, and we're still in the city, aren't we?"  
  
"We are," Tali confirmed. "Take a look outside. Beautiful, isn't it, in its way?" She chuckled and looked around at the room. "It's a luxury I got used to, over the years. It's nice to be able to have a real room again, not just a deep, dark hole with no light and no view…" She smirked a little. "…for all that we're still underground, at least here there's something to see." Her smile softened again as she watched him staring out the window at the glimmering magical lights of the city. "It's even nicer to have someone special here to share it with," she whispered.  
  
"It's beautiful," Tarlyn said again as he watched the city moving about far below. Even as it neared midnight, the streets were busy. "You're opening it up," he commented. "All these windows… it feels like Cormyr." He blinked then, blushing a little, and turned back to her, lowering his eyes and bowing his head in a half-bow before he looked up at her again. "My lady, you must have so many special people to share this with… surely there would be lines?"  
  
Tali shook her head and laughed quietly, then walked over to the pile of cushions and fell back into them. They made a strange, soft crunching noise as she landed. "Beanbags…" she explained. "A vice I picked up in my travels." She patted a spot next to her and grinned up at him invitingly.   
  
Her voice was soft and a little sad when she spoke again. "Sure… the city's full of men who'd love to be where you are right now. The thing is, the ones who would seek me out are the ones who would do it for their own ends, for their own ambitions… not because they wanted to listen, or because they really cared about me. They understand power and lust, not love." She gazed quietly into his eyes for a few seconds, then smiled and murmured, "That's what makes you the special one."  
  
Tarlyn watched her lay down, then when she beckoned him, knelt and curiously tested the surface of the beanbags. His eyes widened for a moment as he felt them shift beneath him, then he regained his balance and settled down comfortably next to her on his side. "Do that many really look at you and see only a force in need of their shaping?" he asked sadly, then shook his head slowly. "I guess our brothers aren't really any better than our sisters, Lady. That's a shame."  
  
He rose to a half-kneel, gathered one of her thighs across his knee, and began to stroke, long, smooth, even caresses of his long, dark fingers, just firm enough to ask the muscle away from the bone beneath, just light enough to feel like a caress. "I guess I got the hubris out of my system early." He grinned ruefully. "It's hard to be arrogant when you're standing in front of an ogre...and hard to think you're all that clever in the presence of a dragon."  
  
She wriggled a little and nestled down into the beanbag, settling her thigh across his knee comfortably. Her head tilted back, eyes half-closed, with a delighted little shiver. "Oh... oh, that's so nice... I'd almost forgotten what it was like, to be with one of my own and not be on my guard every moment..." She sighed a little and spread her hair out behind her.  
  
"And any power is one to be turned to your own best ends," she said with a faint little shrug. "That's the way we were raised... all of us were. It's the reason so few ever learned to trust. I want to teach them that... but it's going to be slow. Generations, probably. The old ways don't change overnight. I'm finding the people I can trust, and who I can teach to trust, but there aren't many of them... yet." She reached over and traced a fingertip in soft little swirls along his forearm. "And none of them have made me feel as good as you do."  
  
Tarlyn flushed warm at the compliment, smile spreading wide. His fingertips, bunched together, scalloped the inside of her thigh, dragging tightly against the grain of her muscle, tugging fiber by fiber loose from the tight clutch against the bone, then smoothing lightly downward to her knee again with his palm.  
  
"Perhaps that's another advantage you have." he murmured. "You live forever, don't you? You'll be here long after the current matrons have been forgotten. You'll be there when all of living history falls into darkness."  
  
Tali smiled warmly, slid an arm around him again, and trailed the tip of a single fingernail from his waist upward along his spine. "I've got time. I'll be here when they're all gone. And someday..." She sighed blissfully and squirmed a little, tucking her free foot between his. "Someday, there will be a day when the life you and I were raised in is nothing more than a history lesson to warn our children."  
  
Tarlyn shivered, lifting up into her touch and arching his back as her fingernail rose. A little less tentatively, he curled a knee over hers, and squeezed her leg between his. "It's beautiful. Your vision is beautiful...my lady, how could anyone not be moved by it?"  
  
Tali sighed softly, and her fingernail traced a line upward, parting Tarlyn's hair to trail up the back of his neck, then stroke a gentle, spread hand downward again. "I just want things to be better..." she whispered sadly. "I don't want our people to have to suffer anymore."  
  
Watching her move, watching her breathe, Tarlyn was breathless. He simply gazed at her for a moment, again gathering his courage, then leaned forward, brushed his parted lips over the sharp edge of her lower jawline, and whispered, "You're hungry. Have your beloved ones been away long?"  
  
Trembling a little, Tali bit her lip and smiled a fond little smile. "A while," she admitted, then touched the fingertips of her free hand under his chin to raise his eyes to hers again. She held his eyes with hers as she said slowly and deliberately, "…but that's not why I need, or why I'm happy that you're here."   
  
Still stroking his back, without breaking the gaze, she let go of his chin and curled her hand into his hair, ruffling it gently. "You're not filling someone else's place, Tarlyn. I don't work that way. I told you how I feel and how I live, and you're very quickly making a place in my heart that's all your own."  
  
Tarlyn blinked wide, startled blue eyes up at her, and his fingers faltered as he massaged her thigh. "You mean I… we…" He looked downward, caught himself as his eyes fell to her breasts, then lifted them again – and found himself staring into her eyes once more, purely accidentally. "…but I'm… I couldn't… possibly…" He trailed off into silence, both lost and more than a little self-conscious.  
  
For a silent moment he simply stared, trying to decide whether this could be happening or not, then his eyes drifted closed and he slipped his arms around her once more. He brushed a feather-light kiss just beneath her chin, and then relaxed and let himself lay against her, his long, pale hair spilling across her cheek and her shoulder.  
  
Tali curled both arms around him now, one hand resting easily at the small of his back while the other traced a gentle arc between his shoulders. "I'm not like that…" she whispered in his ear as she held him. "You're not a plaything, or someone to fill my empty time. You're a brilliant, beautiful man who found out everything I was and everything I am…"   
  
She kissed the small, dark point of his ear, and smiled. "…and you didn't ask for a single thing but to listen and understand who I am and what I believe in." Turning her head a little, she touched her lips gently to the center of his forehead, then leaned down to touch her head to his and gaze silently into his eyes.  
  
Stunned, shaking his head slowly and grinning crookedly, Tarlyn breathed, "I can't believe this is happening…" He held her that way for a moment, perfectly still, their foreheads touching, eyes locked. "You…" he whispered in quiet wonder, "…well, if you want me, then you have me. It's that simple."   
  
He gazed at her a moment longer, as he slipped a hand free and stroked the length of her hair between his fingers. So this was how it felt to touch a god… had any of the priests, with all their vehement sermons, ever felt this way? His next words spilled out before he realized he had spoken them, with all the reverence of a prayer. "I love you…" He blinked, startled at himself… then bit his lip, holding his breath as he waited to see what she would say.  
  
Equally startled by his sudden confession, Tali just stared for a moment, then her crimson eyes began to sparkle with unshed tears as she felt the words again in her mind. They echoed, not just with the shock of confession, but with the force of a true prayer. She closed her eyes, and a single teardrop trickled down her cheek. "You do…?" she asked at first, not quite believing it, then softer, in a voice filled with wonder, "You do…"She reached up and stroked one hand through his hair gently, just as he did to hers, and looked deeply into his eyes as she searched her soul, and his.   
  
Silently, she questioned her own motives. In the centuries she and Dusty had been married, she had indeed loved others, but it had never taken this path. In the end, the ache in her heart for one of her own, who truly understood her, would not be denied. When at last she whispered, "…and I love you…" it was no less than certain truth. The words spoken, she pulled him down to her before he could respond, and kissed him hungrily, holding his body tightly against hers in the dim candlelight. 


	9. Dusty Returns

The palace was silent when Dusty arrived home in a flare of soft golden light. The usual raucous chatter and footfalls of the children were absent, and he guessed that it must have been pretty early. He slid a heavy pack off his shoulder with a sigh, set it carefully on the floor, then stepped out onto the terrace, gazing out over the city.  
  
The city, too, was silent. The streets weren't empty, but were not yet busy enough for noise to drift up to the higher levels of his home. Yawning, he stretched, and then eased out of the heavy surface clothing his travels forced him to wear. He was barely awake, but he wanted to feel the cool underground air through his fur before he went in to bed. "Slax," he swore, "It's earlier and earlier anymore. I wonder if anyone's up."  
  
Even as he spoke, he heard soft, padded footsteps from the other end of the terrace. A lithe black Bast-cat woman in a linen skirt was gliding toward him with a smile, her tail swaying. When she noticed his gaze upon her, she stopeed, bowed, and smiled. "You've come home earlier than expected," she purred. "Welcome!"  
  
Dusty smiled as he noticed her. "Sul'mah, nefermau." he said, offering a hand outstretched, fingers spread. "Never known my Shabti to miss a morning chime. How does Bast bless this day?" He chuckled a little, waiting for the feline's forehead to press into his palm. "I guess everyone's still asleep, huh?"  
  
Shabti nudged her head into the palm of his hand and purred quietly, tail curling lazily around her ankle. "Today promises to be..." She paused, grinned a feline-fanged grin as she thought about it, then finished, "...a most eventful day." She kept her tone carefully neutral. It would be an eventful day indeed, she thought. She nodded, then, and rumbled quietly. "Indeed. Even the small ones have yet to wake. They will be happy to see you home. They miss you so."  
  
Curling his fingers tightly to rub his palm from her brow to her ears, Dusty said with a grin, "Wonderful. Hopefully not too eventful 'til I wake up again?" He smiled hopefully. It had been a long, long trip, and he wasn't prepared to deal with anything more eventful than a nap. "I'd ask you to stay with me, but the little ones would miss you terribly. Tali'll be waking up anytime now, I was hoping to check in with her before I drop for the count..."  
  
Shabti's breath caught for a single heartbeat. Her tail flicked back and forth once, as she struggled to find a way to inform him of the Lady's visitor. Head still bowed, she smiled a cryptic little smile and murmured, "Yes, I'm sure the Lady will awake soon. She was... awake... quite late herself, last evening."  
  
Dusty was worried by the sudden change in her tone. He blinked, and slipped his arm around her slender waist, turning to walk back through the suspended causeway to the bedroom terraces. "Is everything all right?" he asked. "Not another riot, was it?"  
  
Shabti walked with him, tail swaying with her step, ears tall and proud. "No," she said at last. "I understand that she attended to some difficulty outside the city early in the evening." How, precisely to tactfully tell the Queen's husband that this 'difficulty' had resulted in her bathing and clothing a strange Drow, or where that Drow was at the moment, was proving problematic.  
  
Nodding thoughtfully, Duty asked carefully, "It's taken care of, then? Everything all right now?" He smiled. "No droopy whiskers and ears on my favorite mau?" As if to rpove his point, he ruffled her ears fondly before returning his arm to her waist and leading her up the winding stairs.  
  
Purring, she smiled contentedly up at him. "Yes, I believe she has..." She quirked an eyebrow, bit the inside of her cheek, and cleared her throat a little. "...taken care of things quite well." Her voice was amused, if guarded, and she wore a cryptic feline grin. She even chuckled, perked an ear, and feigned offense as she commented, "I would not be seen with droopy ears or whiskers. It would not present a fitting picture of the house, or of my family."  
  
Dusty chuckled softly, and leaned in to rub his cheek against her forehead. "How I love you, Shabti. How we all love you." He smiled. "All right, then. I'm turning in. If Tali asks, let her know things in Evermeet went quite well, but we have tons to talk about when my brain works again?" He paused outside the arch to the master quarters, and bent down, touching his nose to hers. "Goodnight kiss? I've been a good wolf..."  
  
Shabti nudged her nose under his chin fondly and murmured, "And I love you..." She looked up at the door, and her eyes went wide for a second before she recovered. Her tone was once more cryptically neutral as she said, "I believe that the two of you will have a great deal to discuss..."   
  
She smiled brightly at his second request and purred, "Of course..." She stretched up on tiptoe to kiss him softly and warmly, then licked his nose with a sandpaper tongue. Before he could reach to open the door she raised a finger and started to speak, then stopped herself, then finally simply said, "Do not be too startled if the Lady is... not alone..."  
  
Dusty rumbled into the kiss, grinning. He was hungry, as he often was after trips, but too well-mannered to appropriate Shabti when her morning routine called. Nose wrinkling at the touch of her tongue, he grinned and whispered, "Later in the evening, kitten, I'll see you and raise you that."   
  
He blinked, curiously, at her next comment, and tilted his head to one side to regard her curiously. "Er...okay, I'll grab a robe..." He smiled. "See you later, sweetie. It's good to be home." A fond roll of his fingertips through her headfur, then he turned and passed under the archway into the common room of the quarters.  
  
Shabti just smiled cryptically, bowed a little again, and glided off down the stairs with that soft, swaying walk. She was deeply curious, but too well-mannered to remain at the door and eavesdrop... at least, in an obvious way. A few stairs down from the door, she stopped and waited.  
  
As Dusty glanced around, he saw no one in the common room. Not terribly unusual, considering that Tali wasn't awake yet. What was unusual was a pile of tattered clothes and an even more tattered pack on a chair. A book and a pen had been carefully laid on a table beside the chair.  
  
He blinked, pausing to regard to clothes, and winced. "Jesus, somebody got pretty badly cut up." He blinked, lifting the shirt, and regarded it thoughtfully. "Shabti, would you ask Mina...." He shook his head. "Never mind. This thing wouldn't survive a washing." He opened the bath closet and gathered a robe around his shoulders, then opened the bedroom door.  
  
The bed was untouched. Most of the candles had burned out overnight, as no one had dared to disturb Tali and her guest by coming in to replace them. Only a couple of larger candles still lit the room. In the near-darkness, he could make out clothes that had been flung haphazardly on the floor.   
  
He stared for a moment. The disarray, the quiet of the bed, left him to wonder if there'd been trouble...and then, his nose told him what his eyes were still asking. He turned his gaze to the corner, eyebrows raised, to the pile of beanbags Tali favored so… and found her sleeping there. She lay undressed, draped half on top of a Drow he'd never seen around the city, with one thigh tucked between his, one arm across his chest, and her head on his shoulder as the strange Drow, equally unclothed, had one arm around her waist.   
  
He stared for a moment longer. He had no idea who this man was, or what he was doing here, but he looked comfortable enough. So did she. "Oh." he whispered. "Well, then." Carefully, he turned and slipped back out again, into the common room. "Well then." he echoed. "I guess I better find someplace else, hadn't I?" He chuckled once, shaking his head slowly. "I wonder if there's a couch free on the back terrace."  
  
Shabti had come back up the stairs and was waiting for him in the common room when he came back out. Half contrite, and half grinning, she bowed her head and murmured, "Forgive me. I was not certain how to tell you that the Lady had..." She quirked an eyebrow. "...company. This has never come up before."  
  
Dusty blinked, and chuckled quietly. "No, it certainly hasn't. I guess I've missed a lot, haven't I?" He sighed, surveying the room. "Oh, hell with it. I'm too tired to find a proper bed. If anyone needs me, I'll be on the couch here..." He brushed fond but exhausted fingertips down the mau's back, and curled onto his side. "Stay here a little while? Sit with me?" He smiled, pinkening a little. "Don't wanna...." A yawn cut off his words."...fall asleep alone tonight." He yawned again. "Today. Whatever."  
  
Dutifully, Shabti knelt beside him and stroked his hair, resting her head against his side. "Of course. I am never too busy to make you more comfortable." Ears perked, she turned her head toward the bedroom door, listened for a moment, then chuckled softly. "Ah, she wakes..."  
  
Even as the cat-woman spoke, a familiar soft, sleepy voice whispered into Dusty's mind, "Hello, beloved…"  
  
Dusty touched his forehead to hers, and sighed, a loose arm draping more than tightening around her shoulders. "Thank you." he whispered into her ear. "I'll be asleep soon. Already getting there..." He smiled, then, at the touch of Tali's mind, and silently thought, "Hello love. I guess I've missed a lot these last few days, haven't I?"  
  
Shabti fell silent. She'd learned to recognize when they were 'talking', and she simply stroked his hair and said nothing.   
  
In Dusty's mind, he could feel the faint blush... as well as the warm, quiet contentedness still there from the night before. "You could say that, love. It's... a long story." He felt a pair of light mental 'arms' squeezing him gently for a moment, then letting go.  
  
Dusty would have chuckled, but his muscles were already flowing lax around him. "I'd guessed." he whispered into her mind. "Well...ah, Mina's making breakfast, give your guest there my seat and we'll catch up as soon as I'm coherent. It went well. Looks like things here did too, huh?"  
  
He could hear Tali laugh softly as she lay half-awake in the next room. "Well enough..." he heard her think to him, "… but I've missed you. I love you, my angel. Sleep well."  
  
He smiled quietly, already beginning to snore. "Love you too, hon. Missed you. We'll catch up soon..."  
  
[The End… but only for now.] 


End file.
